Just in – Tasmanian truffles!
Come to our West Hobart, Devonport and Sandy Bay stores and snuffle out some truffles!
Take some inspiration from Discover Tasmania’s recent campaign and use your skills as a truffle snuffler to seek out the delights of Tasmanian-grown French Black Winter truffles. You won’t have to go all the way to Lower Barrington though, because truffles have just arrived into our West Hobart, Devonport and Sandy Bay stores!
Our crew at West Hobart, Devonport and Sandy Bay were very excited this week to receive their first delivery of this season’s truffles from our supplier, Truffledore, in Lower Barrington at the foot of Cradle Mountain. Truffledore has been owned and run by Ina Ansmann and Timothy Noonan since 2019. The truffière was planted in 2007 and contains 600 English oak, holly oak and hazelnut trees.
Truffles are a form of fungus and grow underground on the root system of the trees in a symbiotic relationship with them. Truffledore grows French Black Winter (Périgord) truffles which are available from June to August.
Ina and Tim run their farm as organically as possible including using natural pest control such as their flock of guinea fowl. Harvesting is done by hand with the aid of a small team of truffle dogs lead by a highly-skilled truffle snuffler 😉.
How to use truffles
Truffles pair well with simple dishes where the flavour of the truffles can be the hero. Dishes featuring eggs, cheese, butter, or cream are a perfect match. A creamy pasta, a risotto, poached eggs with asparagus and hollandaise sauce and a shaving of truffles, a truffled poached egg on a bed of polenta with a shaving of parmesan and truffle – are all sublime combinations. What’s even better is the ingredients which pair well with truffles are relatively inexpensive – so that using 15 or 20g of truffle for a dish which serves four or six people won’t break the bank. If you do want to splash out, seafood is also a great match – scallops and crayfish in particular.
Tasmanian chef and restaurateur Rodney Dunn of The Agrarian Kitchen loves truffles so much he wrote a whole book about them – try this recipe for Truffled Macaroni and Cheese from his book The Truffle Cookbook. The dish pairs truffles with the simplest ingredients to create a cheesy flavour bomb. The recipe will serve six people and calls for 20g of truffle, so that’s about $6.50 per person – not too bad for a taste of perfection.
Find out more about truffles and how to use them here and here.
Truffledore’s French Black Winter Truffles are now available from our Sandy Bay, Devonport and West Hobart stores for $1.95 per gram.
